Myanmar minority resist Cyclone Mahasen evacuation

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A cyclone only a day away carries wind and rain that could become deadly. But in dozens of refugee camps that spatter Myanmar’s western coast, the order to evacuate ahead of the storm was met with widespread refusal.

Tens of thousands of displaced Rohingya people live in the plastic-roofed tents and huts made of reeds, and they distrust nearly any order from a government that barely acknowledges they exist.

Around 140,000 people - mostly Rohingya - have been living in crowded camps in Myanmar’s Rakhine state since last year, when two outbreaks of sectarian violence between the Muslim minority and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists forced many Rohingya from their homes.

Nearly half the displaced live in coastal areas considered highly vulnerable to storm surges and flooding from Cyclone Mahasen, which is expected to make landfall early on Friday.

“They say they’ll take us someplace safe,” said Kyaung Wa, a cycle-rickshaw driver who has spent nearly a year in a series of camps on the outskirts of Sittwe after his house was destroyed in the violence. If his current home is little more than a hut covered with a plastic sheet, he fears ending up someplace even worse, and living deeper in the countryside and away from work.

So he and the vast majority of his neighbours insisted they would stay, along with thousands of other Rohingya along the coastline.

Officials, he said, had been trying to empty his camp for months.

“Now they say, ‘You have to move because of the storm,”‘ he said. “We keep refusing to go. ... If they point guns at us, only then will we move.”

President’s Office Minister Aung Min told reporters Wednesday that the government guarantees the safety of the Rohingyas during relocation and promises to return them to their current settlement when the storm has passed.

Mahasen was a Category 1 storm heading toward Chittagong, Bangladesh, according to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Depending on its final trajectory, the cyclone could bring life-threatening conditions for 8.2 million people in northeast India, Bangladesh and Myanmar, the UN office said.

Heavy and moderate rain and gusty winds were lashing the Bangladesh coast on Thursday morning. River ferries and boats were suspended, and about 170 factories near the choppy Bay of Bengal were closed.

Cox’s Bazar, a seafront town in Bangladesh in the expected path of the cyclone, had rain, wind and higher than normal tides. There was flooding in low-lying areas of several nearby island towns, said Ruhul Amin, a government official, and tens of thousands of people had left their homes for cyclone shelters and schools and government buildings on high ground.

Tidal surges were feared if the storm surge hit at high tide, said Mohammad Shah Alam, director of Bangladesh’s Meteorological Department, in Dhaka.

In Myanmar at least eight people - and possibly many more - were killed as they fled the cyclone on Monday night, when overcrowded boats carrying more than 100 Rohingya capsized. Only 42 people had been rescued by Wednesday, and more than 50 Rohingya were still missing, said deputy information minister Ye Htut.

Much attention was focused on western Myanmar because of fears over the fate of the crowded, low-lying Rohingya camps.

Myanmar’s government had planned to move 38,000 people within Rakhine state by Tuesday but “it is unclear how many people have been relocated,” the UN office said, adding that Muslim leaders in the country have called on people to cooperate with the government’s evacuation.

With sprawling camps still crowded with people, it appeared very few Rohingya had agreed to leave, despite offers of additional food rations.

The ones that had left said they had little choice.

“They just put us on the truck and brought us here,” said Mahmoud Issac, a day labourer now living with his family and about 500 other Rohingya on the grounds of a small mosque. His wife and five children live on the ground floor of a two-room school, while he and the other men sleep on the mosque’s portico.

He has no idea if he’ll be allowed to return to the camp that had become his home.

The Rohingya trace their ancestry to what is now Bangladesh, but many have lived in Myanmar for generations. Officially, though, they are dismissed as illegal immigrants. They face widespread discrimination in largely Buddhist Myanmar, and particularly in Rakhine, where many of the Rohingya live.

Tensions remain high in Rakhine nearly a year after sectarian unrest tore through the region and left parts of Sittwe, the state capital, burned to the ground. At least 192 people were killed.

The violence has largely segregated Rakhine state along religious lines, with prominent Buddhists - including monks - urging people not to employ their Muslim onetime neighbours, or to shop in their businesses.

International rights groups and aid agencies urged that the evacuations be stepped up.

The British-based aid agency Oxfam welcomed the government’s evacuation efforts, but said “swifter action is needed to ensure people are moved before the storm hits.”